


To Kill or Not to Kill

by Ferith12



Series: Letters to Alfred [1]
Category: DCU
Genre: Gen, No action., One of my many Talon AUs, TalonAU, just thoughts about stuff, sorry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-14
Updated: 2016-03-14
Packaged: 2018-05-26 08:49:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6232225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ferith12/pseuds/Ferith12
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Talon has a phylosophical question, so he writes a letter to Alfred. Read notes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Kill or Not to Kill

**Author's Note:**

> In this AU Dick became Robin at age ten and was stolen away by the Court of Owls about a year and a half later. Batman takes in a ten year old Jason Todd five years after that. Jason dies and is resurrected a year later. This whole time Dick has been running around doing Talon-y stuff for the court, who have also kept him from aging, possibly to keep him more compliant. A year after his resurrection Jason runs into a twelve-year-old-looking talon and decides to keep it. This takes place when Dick has been with Jason for about three years.

It never occurred to Talon that Alfred wouldn’t be able to help him. Some how, it seemed to him that Alfred knew everything. So asking him for advice seemed the most natural thing in the world. He didn’t remember Alfred, but he KNEW that, knew that Alfred had the answers if anyone did, and that asking him was RIGHT.

That didn’t make it any less terrifying. 

Talon had been avoiding the bat clan (aside from Jason) like the plague, even though part of him ached for them, ached for Bruce and Alfred and the crystal chandelier that he somehow remembered with sparkling clarity. 

Because he was Dick Grayson, their Dick Grayson, who was dead and now was back, and they had a right to know that. But at the same time he WASN’T. He was Talon, undead ex-assassin trying to figure out what it meant to be a person, and he was a stranger to them. And they were Bruce and Alfred, HIS Bruce and Alfred, whom he longed for with all his heart, but at the same time, they WEREN’T his. He didn’t remember THEM, only felt that he should. Dick Grayson had belonged to them and they had belonged to him, but Talon didn’t remember, Talon did not even know how to belong at all (though he liked to think he was learning, with Jason) and he had no claim to them.

But he had come, now, to a point where he couldn’t really count on Jason as his last say when it came to truth and morality and what it meant to be a functioning human being, because the truth was that Jason himself was so very confused and lost. Talon could see that now, see how lost he was, and he wanted now to help him, instead of the other way around.

But Talon was nowhere near ready for that, he was so confused himself. As far as he could tell the biggest problem, the one that defined Red Hood and batman and the problems they had with each other, was the no kill rule. And Talon had no idea where he stood on that huge, gaping, grand canyon of a divide.

Because killing seemed wrong. Really, truly, ultimately wrong, and Talon hated it. No, that wasn’t the truth. Talon loved it. He enjoyed every second of pain he inflicted on his victims. And THAT was what he hated. 

But as much as he hated the wrongness, as much as he despised the way it seemed to prove his inherent evil, he couldn’t get away from all of Jason’s arguments. Because Jason was excellent at proving, again and again, that killing was the only way that WORKED, that killing ultimately saved the lives of innocents. He had EVIDENCE for this. 

And against these arguments, what did Batman have?

Simply an imaginary line. A claim that the No-Killing Rule was what separated “Me” from “Them”. That not killing, simply by the virtue of his stubbornness, made Batman better than the criminals he fought and better than anyone who didn’t abide by his rule.

This struck Talon as being incredibly selfish and self-righteous.

If Talon were to stop killing he would do it for the good of others, not in order to feel better about himself.

But then again, who were “others”. How could he claim to help people when he killed some of them?

And how could he ever learn to be a good person, or even a halfway decent one, when he spent his nights doing things that made him feel so evil?

He was confused, and he needed a third opinion.

And so, he gathered his courage and wrote a letter to Alfred.


End file.
